Friday, July 21, 2006

Mama Bird

Ordinarily I wouldn't touch a grasshopper but today I picked one up and brought inside to give to Max. He loves to eat them and he hasn't had much fun ever since a much younger but larger dog came to live with him, so I figured it would bring some happiness to his otherwise humdrum day to make a grasshopper delivery. I was outside with Dog Dos by the way, which is why he didn't catch it himself. I tried to interest her in it, but she only became accinterested when I showed it to Max. Of course. She killed it and he ate it. I hope my little baby bird was happy.

Later that day while I was deep into pinning fabric for the curtains I'm sewing for my bedroom, I was startled by the sudden appearance of Her Highness the Thundering Herd. Being bred to be in Canadian air, she naturally gravitates to the AC vent by the dining room table. I think it's where her heart lies. Today that literally came true - her heart shaped dog tag got caught in the AC register. She didn't exactly panic, which was nice, but I did have to drop what I was doing to assist her... by taking embarrassing photos.

The Maternal Brain, an article in SciAm Jan 2006 (see I've advanced two months in my pile), suggests that mothers actually get smarter because of motherhood. At least mother rats do. It's an interesting proposition that I won't get into now, at least not academically. I'll just suffice it to say that adding a puppy to your life does change things. Has it made me more intelligent? I doubt it, at least not by the usual psychological definition of ratcheting up my WAIS-R IQ score.

But I can say that it has propelled me into being much more active and productive. I've actually lost 4 lbs chasing around after her and trying to teach The Twins how to behave. Not that I keep track of weight, but I do weigh exactly as much as I did on my first day of college (minus those 4 lbs). I think that's pretty darn good since that was 14 years ago. I've got to figure out how to get those pounds back. When I get productive I don't prioritize eating.

Today I didn't get around to eating lunch until around dinner time. What's really funny is that while I was pinning curtains, I was also editing and burning another DVD (it's my 2nd in 2 days - backing up research and teaching clips so I can free up more space on my laptop) and also listening to a French language lesson. See, being a mom to two pups has made me smarter - I regularly do three things at once now. Ok, so I've probably been TypeA since birth. The mutli-tasking thing is nothing new. I have Pimsleur's lessons mounted on my iPod and when they come up in rotation sometimes I listen to them for a while as a refresher. When Bomber the Newfie needed my urgent assistance I was listening to the lesson that teaches you how to say "Je voudrais dejeuner." I would like to eat lunch. It was about 4:30, and yep, I should've eaten lunch way before that. Oh well, I'm eating ice cream now with all the toppings :-)

Perhaps I need a mama bird to deliver me little packages of protein...

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About Me

I'm a papermaker, a newspaper editor, and have a PhD in primate social psychology — I guess you could say I am a paper expert! Toddler Field Notes and her two canine companions — both Newfoundlands — make frequent appearances here.